This is what the flight attendant saw, and yet still she asked me, "Do you have any trash you want to get rid of sir?" And no, she wasn't talking about Pocket of Bolts, because when I looked up she got flustered and said, "I mean, ma'am." I think it's hopeless.
We picked up a rental car (which had awesome satellite radio!) and drove down to just outside of grad school town where we had Pricelined a very basic motel room. It was clean and cute, though. Dinner at Ruby Tuesday's, where I had steak and lobster because, why not?
And then I spent some time very reluctantly working on my "dissertation spiel." Everyone says that defenses start with the defender talking for a bit, so I had to be ready. I decided against trying to memorize. I have to go either all extemporaneous or talk from notes. And under that much stress, I figure they'd rather have to forgive me for using notes than for floundering around and getting tongue-tied.
We woke up early and went to breakfast at what used to be our favorite diner back when we lived there. Here's me looking pretty stressed out and fragile!
Better with sunglasses, I think!
Just post-defense, when I'd been told that I would pass. Off to the left, the champagne is being poured. Everyone is moving and I am still. Pocket of Bolts didn't quite feel comfortable to use the flash!
The defense was fine, I should add. The 'questions' were mostly of the form, "When you turn this into a book, you might consider adding a section about..." There was also some really interesting discussion. I did not feel under-prepared, though I didn't prepare much! I felt nervous and tense but in an alert way.
Also, many of my younger classmates were there. Here is a reunion-type class-photo. We have one beloved picture of us all together in this professor's class, and whenever any of us are together we try to retake some form of that picture. This is the closest we have had to a full reunion as yet, I think, and one person is still missing (currently in Taiwan), hence the black and white headshot.
Afterwards, my adviser and another member of the committee took me and Pocket of Bolts out to a very fancy lunch, at a restaurant neither PoB nor I had ever been able to afford eating at when we actually lived there. They were really kind to me. It felt like a rite of passage thing, like a switch had been made between treating me like a grad student and treating me like a junior colleague. There was much discussion about the book project, next career moves, and so forth. Very old boyish in a way, but not a gendered way--if that makes any sense!
Then, there was a lot of paperwork to take care of. Pocket of Bolts was an amazing husband dashing hither and thither to produce massive quantities of cash, blank CDs, and brute strength. (The four bound volumes had to be hand-carried over to the archive...!)
Then there was a bar, and post-bar drinking, and this marvelous picture was taken somewhere in there. This is the grad student lounge in Pocket of Bolts' department where he and I hung out for the first time, when he had just started his dissertation and mine was barely a twinkle in my eye. But in this picture, we are both "Doctors"! (Only one of us is drunk, though.)
Zapaper: You and my dissertation have been in my life for exactly the same length of time.
PoB: But I'm still here and the dissertation is gone. I WIN!!!
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